US government would be prohibited from ever mandating lead pipe replacement or lowering lead limits in water. Environmentalists expressed alarm about the moves, which, if successful, would in effect prohibit the government from ever requiring lead line replacement in the future, or lowering lead limits.
The Trump administration is also working to kill a recently implemented ban on TCE , a compound that is among the most toxic and common water pollutants , and particularly a risk on military bases. Both rules are being targeted via the Congressional Review Act CRA , which gives Congress and incoming administrations 60 legislative days to consider undoing any last-minute rules implemented by a previous administration.
Already, Republican legislators have introduced resolutions for each rule that are the first step in CRA repeals. The Trump administration also froze all final rules that were not yet in effect, including that for TCE, which was scheduled to take effect on 16 January until a Trump-appointed judge delayed it.
That opened a second path for the Trump administration to undo the TCE rules. If the GOP is successful in repealing the lead rule, tens of millions of people would continue to have drinking water contaminated with the heavy metal, a neurotoxin that the EPA has found lowers IQ scores in children, stunts their development and increases blood pressure in adults.
The agency estimates the stricter standard will prevent up to , infants from having low birthweight, save about , IQ points in children and avoid up to 1, premature deaths annually from heart disease.
